With his third album, The House, coming out January 19 on Domino Records, electronic-indie-pop alchemist Aaron Maine—a.k.a. Porches—has compiled a playlist for The Dowsers that indulges his love of unpleasant sounds.

“I’m drawn to this collection of songs for a certain darkness that they emanate. Sometimes, it’s the dissonance in the harmonies that I’m really drawn to, sometimes it’s the dissonance in the content that I find attractive. A lot of strange and beautiful decisions.

“In [Aphex Twin’s] ‘180_db[130],’ the ugliness of the sounds are dug into a way that’s almost playful—like I can imagine making something like that with a little shit grin on my face. [DJ Richard’s] ‘Stygian Freeze’ is so effortlessly menacing that it’s unsettling, while the quality of the sounds and reverb are really soft and welcoming. One thing I don’t like in a song is when it feels like an artist makes a challenging decision only for the sake of having it sound challenging—it can come off as masturbatory. In all of these songs, the dissonance feels like a complete necessity to the song’s existence. I don’t know why exactly I’m drawn to this, maybe that it feels like a more honest reflection of the human experience, and there’s something exciting about finding beauty in the seemingly ugly.”—Aaron Maine, Porches